Earth to web scammers; GET A JOB!

Tag Archives: free sample

Is your wallet too fat? Take Ripped Muscle X, the wallet-slimming supplement, and never be teased about that unsightly back-pocket bulge again!

Here’s how it works:

You get an offer of a free trial sample. Woohoo! What’s free any more these days?

So of course you give the seller your credit card number, to cover shipping and handling of your free trial sample.

A month later, you see a transaction on your credit card statement that you didn’t authorize. Surprise! You’ve subscribed to an infinite number of bottles of Ripped Muscle X, to be delivered monthly forever.

Customers have complained that they weren’t told that by accepting the sample they implicitly agreed to the subscription. But, technically, they were. It’s all explained in the Trial Sale Terms And Conditions document that opens if you click on the tiny link in the bottom left corner of the Ripped Muscle X web page.

You give up your right to go to court or join a class action.

They can take your money before “accepting” your order. They only accept your order when they ship it.

Your “purchase” of a free trial bottle implicitly begins a monthly subscription. This subscription is automatically charged to your card unless you cancel it within 14 days of the date you ordered the trial (not the date you received your sample!).

The trial is free, not the sample. If you haven’t returned it within the 14-day period, during a large part of which it was probably rattling around in some USPS truck, you implicitly, automatically purchase the sample for $87, the same price as you’ll be charged each month for your subscription.

There is no warranty on the product, nor any guarantee that it’s suitable for any use.

If you reverse a charge on your credit card, this is “theft” and NSA ninja-spooks will follow your trail of URLs back to your door. (Okay, I might have elaborated this last term. I’m just trying to make Terms and Conditions fun!)

But, the scammers don’t seem to be selling it right now. In my last installment, re: our friends in Del Mar, CA doing business as Elite Test 360 / Ripped Muscle X, I tried to go to the Ripped Muscle X Order Form, only to be diverted to a website for a different supplement. I checked several other body-building supplement websites. They either had Ripped Muscle X locked up or were diverting sales prospects to other supplements. Ripped Muscle X has their website locked down, displaying this notice:

But it’s not over. You’ll find the same implicit-subscription, credit-card-suck game lurking behind offers of many other free supplement trials. If you look.

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You wouldn’t have sex with just anybody!

So don't give your credit card data to just anybody. The one best thing you can do to avoid getting scammed: restrict your online shopping to Amazon. You may still get a shoddy product, but you'll save money, and you'll avoid so much grief.